Love Is The Drug

As I was trolling the Interwebs last night, word came through old buddy Tim Rosaforte of this Back To The Future moment:

I'm baaaack!

Davis Love III, captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team in a losing effort at Medinah in 2012, will get a chance at redemption in 2016 at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaksa, Minn. Love will be the next U.S. Ryder Cup captain, according to Tim Rosaforte of Golf Digest and Golf Channel.

I even double-checked the date stamp on the item to be certain that Marty hadn't fired up the flux capacitor and transported us all back to 2011.  Alas, no such luck...

Shack is all over it with a link-heavy post, and alternately terms the selection "Head-scratching" and "Stunningly uninspired."  Shack does good work, but occasionally fails to tell us how he really feels....

Bob Harig of ESPN is first to the mark with an analysis:

Tom Watson turned out to be an epic failure as captain, Phil Mickelson got his point across that the U.S. players needed a bigger voice and a continuous plan going forward, and the PGA of America acquiesced by delaying the naming of the next captain and forming a task force. 

After all that, they come up with Love, who was a losing captain in 2012? 

Love might be a good choice, but is he the best? Or even second-best?

No one saw this coming and we'll have to bide our time until the leaks fill in the blanks on the canvas.  Here's Harig's logical guess:

So now it goes to Love, one of Couples' best friends and a guy who was on the 11-member task force. Did he just sell out one of his best friends in Couples? Or did he become a compromise choice because the PGA of America wanted no part of Couples, who is not viewed as the kind of captain who buys into all the ancillary nonsense that comes with the job? 

The latter is more likely, which makes you wonder if the PGA of America cares more about promoting the event than winning it.

All you have to do is review the venues to draw your conclusion as to their priorities...Harig reviews DLIII's captaincy and identifies two Medinah Mistakes:

Love made two crucial errors that likely contributed to the defeat. 

Remember the Mickelson-Keegan Bradley pairing that went 3-0 at Medinah? They were

romping to an easy victory Saturday morning (7 and 6 over Lee Westwood and Luke Donald), and Love wanted to put them out again in the afternoon. Mickelson declined and stuck with his mantra that playing all five matches was not good for him.

Love was criticized for not forcing Mickelson and Bradley back out, but what he could have done was obvious: Take Bradley and put him with Tiger Woods, whose partner Steve Stricker was having an awful week. Woods and Stricker lost to Sergio Garcia and Luke Donald 1-up. Who knows what Bradley might have meant, but a half-point there would have proved huge. 

The other error was putting Stricker out so late Sunday. He was in the 11th position, a crucial spot if the matches became tight. Sure enough, everyone at the end mattered. Stricker was off his game that week and went 0-4; he should have been sacrificed early, when it was clear Europe had to be strong in the beginning. As it turned out, Stricker lost 1-up to Martin Kaymer -- who clinched the Cup for Europe.

Those are both fair and interesting points, but hardly conclusive.  As for the latter, I'll remind the reader that Mark James, the 1999 Euro captain with the same 10-6 lead was harshly criticized for allowing the Americans to run the table in the early matches on Sunday.  As for playing Keegan with Tiger, that's interesting in hindsight, but equally compelling is the logic of keeping him fresh for singles.

At the GolfChannel.com blog there's a bit more support for the choice, first from Randall Mell:

The real story here isn't Love getting the job. It’s why he’s getting the job. It’s why he’s better qualified for whatever new vision the Ryder Cup task force is laying out for the future of the captaincy than are Couples and Azinger, who have both proven themselves formidably as winners in international team events.

It was pretty clear that Zinger didn't want to put his legacy at risk.  As for Freddie, it's obvious that somebody didn't want him...  Hopefully those that wanted Freddie won't make us wait too long to know how it played out behind closed doors.

And from Ryan Lavner:

The issue is how the PGA arrived at this decision. 

Let’s start with the basic premise that the task force was overkill and a drastic overreaction to what happened at Gleneagles. For months we’ve heard from players and PGA officials that this 11-man group is a necessary step to ensure a bright future for this event. They talked this thing to death, looked from all angles at why the Americans have lost six of seven cups, and decided to recycle not just a past captain, but one who lost. 

Fred Couples and Paul Azinger were the favorites for the job, but they declined invitations to the task force. That must have rubbed the group the wrong way, because Love had a prime seat at the table and was involved in the decision-making that led to him being named captain. Conflict of interest, no? 

The 2016 Ryder Cup is still 19 months away, but it is clear that the overhyped task force already has a credibility issue.

That seems harsh, as they designed a perfectly respectable camel...

And Will Gray:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result, so a retread captain like Davis Love III will receive plenty of critique. But while Love came up short at Medinah, his selection to lead the Americans at Hazeltine has plenty of merit. 

If nothing else, Love’s selection eliminates what was reportedly one of the biggest issues among the 2014 Ryder Cup squad – the rapport between the captain and his 12 players. Love is held in high esteem among his PGA Tour colleagues, and the roster will certainly be motivated to atone for 2012, when he seemingly had one hand on the trophy.

Excuse me, but 2014 was about retribution...how did that work out?  Before I give you a few of my own thoughts, Jeff Babineau adds this:

Love, who will be 51 in April, is well-respected by his fellow players, and has solid relationships not only with the “older” guard on the U.S. side – mainstays Tiger Woods, Mickelson and Jim Furyk – but with many of today’s younger players, too. His name, though, had not been at the forefront of speculation regarding who might lead the U.S. in 2016. Leading candidates have been Paul Azinger, the last winning U.S. captain; Fred Couples, who has had success in the biennial Presidents Cup; and Steve Stricker, an assistant in 2014 who would seem to be the next man up among those with Ryder Cup experience who have yet to captain. Generally, Love had been viewed as a potential future Presidents Cup captain. 

“I think it would mean the world to him (to be asked to be Ryder Cup captain again),” Barnhardt (Mac, Davis' agent) said. “I think he’d love to go through the process again. He’d love to win, but he won’t be defined by the result.

Trust me, Mac, if he loses a second straight home game he'll very much be defined by that.

I think Davis is a very strange and unexpected choice, though not necessarily a bad one.  The players did enjoy playing for him, and after the Watson fiasco there could have been far worse over-reactions.  I'd actually throw my lot in with Davis over Freddie, who might just be a bit too laid back for this stage.  

Two additional points.  First, one can't help but revisit all of the nonsense related to the task force, how we were supposed to mirror the "European Template" and other such rubbish.  In fact, Phil had this to say recently:

"I think that when you look at who the next captain is going to be, and you have to look in a big picture of the next 10 Ryder Cups, the next 20 years, as opposed to short-term,'' Mickelson said last week in San Diego. "I think that is one of the things that the task force is looking at is the details on how to set a game plan so that there's continuity from Ryder Cup to Ryder Cup, and you have great player development and leadership and that's consistent with each other.''

Part of this "Template" is to break in new captains by letting them serve as cart drivers Vice Captains before giving them the keys to the cart.  So I couldn't help but note this:

Tim Rosaforte’s full Golf Central report, also mentions Steve Stricker and Tom Lehman (both on the task force) as vice cart drivers in 2016 to help capture the midwest hearts and reaffirm that sucking up to the PGA of America's task force was key.

OK, no doubt Stricker is in line to be a future captain, but I'll also note that he was a Vice Captain at Gleneagles.  But Tom Lehman as a future captain?  Are we giving every losing captain a mulligan?  Even those that got routed?

Last is an entirely inconsequential point, though one that amuses your humble correspondent.  Much of the commentary focuses on the fact that Davis was a member of the Task Force that selected him, and phrases like "Conflict of Interest" have been liberally bandied about.  But no one I've seen has hit upon the most apt historical analogy, that being Dick Cheney.

After George W. Bush had assured himself of the Republican nomination in 2000, Cheney was selected to chair his Vice Presidential selection process.  After receiving Cheney's advice (never disclosed, by the way) Bush decided he'd rather have the selector than the selected.

Why does that amuse me?  Because the mere mention of Darth Vader will make certain heads explode....Come to think of it, Cheney would make a heckuva Ryder Cup captain.